


as the world caves in

by trepidationsHangman



Category: Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Captain G, Mentioned Ellie Rose (Henry Stickmin), Semi-detailed injury, from charles POV, i hope you enjoy hurt/comfort as much as i do, im so sorry, no beta we die like charles, surely the most odd fandom ill write for but soft..... hyperfix go BRR, this is for you stickmintwt!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:09:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25931128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trepidationsHangman/pseuds/trepidationsHangman
Summary: Missions were never easy.Sure, you had Henry to help now (although sometimes it's just alittlecomplicated to actually come up with plans), but that didn’t make it easy. Just a step down from nearly impossible, because hell, this dude had done things you hadthoughtwere impossible before he came around.Like maybe feeling a little toostronglyfor this---Charles Calvin is hopelessly in love with his Special Covert Ops partner, but things take a turn for the worst during a mission and he realizes he may be farther off the deep end than he thought.
Relationships: Charles Calvin/Henry Stickmin
Comments: 25
Kudos: 316





	as the world caves in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gallowsCalibrater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallowsCalibrater/gifts).



> im so sorry that you have to read this but i think i might actually write more of this and that makes me so so ashamed
> 
> this is very loosely based off As the World Caves In by Matt Maltese and i listened to it while writing it so if u wanna put on some music while reading this
> 
> this is for you stickmintwt, have fun reading

Missions were never easy. 

Sure, you had Henry to help now (although sometimes it's just a _little_ complicated to actually come up with plans), but that didn’t make it easy. Just a step down from nearly impossible, because hell, this dude had done things you had _thought_ were impossible before he came around.  
Like maybe feeling a little too _strongly_ for this-

God, christ. There’s no need to beat around the bush, because you’re pretty sure you’re headset over heels for your Special Ops partner. Really, you didn’t mean for this to happen, this was _not_ the greatest plan. Though, you guess it’s kinda essential to mention that you’re so in love with your partner, because now your heart is beating out of your chest as said partner’s voice suddenly rises into your headset.

 _”Hey, Charles. Might be in a little tr-”_  
Your heart jumps into your throat and you nearly choke on it, tapping on the side of your headset.

“Henry? Are you alright?”  
You tap the side of the headset again, you’re pretty sure it doesn’t emit any noise into the microphone but it soothes you in an odd way.

“Henry!?” But, whenever the only thing that comes over the speakers is seemingly panicked mumbling and something that _really_ sounded like an explosion, there’s not a single word to describe how much fear just hit you. You’ve been grasped by trepidation’s spindly fingers and it’s shaking you around until you feel sick to your stomach. You knew Henry didn’t hesitate to look right in the eyes of danger, but Henry could only do so much. 

Henry is flexible, intelligent and certainly not one to hesitate, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s only human, and you’re well aware of that. When it came to human beings versus bombs. . . 

What if he’s dead?

There’s nothing on the speakers now, just radio silence. You’ve felt anxious about a mission before, nervous sometimes, but you’ve never been so _fearful_ during one, and you’re not sure if this could be the most terrified you’ve been in your entire life. Quickly pushing the microphone of your headset away from you, you try to catch your breath, but it comes out a wheeze and sounds even more pathetic as you try to reel it back in. Disquietude runs cold through your blood and you have to bite the inside of your cheek to ground yourself back to reality. You’re piloting a helicopter, afterall.  
You turn your head to look at the building, tall and built up with cold gray bricks. The windows are foggy and don’t display anything important, just small glimpses of hallways. You guess it’d be kinda stupid to keep windows that others can see through in actually important places.  
Ugh, Charles, focus! What’s with you and getting distracted on stupid things?

Well, your special bro-op who you’re actually painfully in love with isn’t exactly a stupid thing to worry about. Now that you realize it again, the feelings of anxiety pumble you once again. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What if he _is_ dead? What if you just let him die alone on a mission with no attempt to help or an attempt to reassure? What if you let this agency try and kill him just like the Toppats? 

God, what if you left the man you love to die in an explosion just to get a mission done? 

You hate the amount of fear panging around your chest, and you know you’d fall if you weren’t sitting down. What if he’s dead? What if they took him? What if they exploded him along with the rest of them? What if-...

What if he’s not dead? What if he’s dying? What if you’re panicking here in your helicopter as you have a chance to save him.

Before you can think about it, your sweaty hands are already turning the wheel as far as it could go, not having time to hum fanfare as you brace for the impact of gray bricks hitting against the metal around you.  
You hear a crushing noise as the metal of your helicopter crumbles in on itself to hopefully prevent you from getting absolutely fucking wrecked from the bricks falling around you, knocking a hole through the wall and setting off at least 2 alarms as the broken and dented helicopter sits in the hall, tilted slightly to the side. The glass from your driver’s window is shattered and sitting against the ground, and you have to push yourself through the window to get out. You manage to land on your feet, and you’re forever grateful for that, because you’d rather not deal with bleeding hands right now.  
You groan from the light pain in your head, but that’s expected after crashing through a fucking brick wall, some nice screaming alarms to remind you of your place. You adjust your headset lightly as you wobble side to side. 

As soon as you gain your balance on the ground through impending thoughts and blaring alarms, you’re running. You’re running toward what seemed the most damaged as fast as your legs could take you, not caring about the burn in your throat or the heaving of your chest as your lungs tried to drag enough air in. A little pain doesn’t matter right now, Henry could be dying right now and it’d be your fault.

Eventually, though, you do have to stop running. Your chest is heaving and sweat is running down the side of your face as you look around the debris, noticing the huge hole in the middle of the floor, most likely caused by that explosion you heard over the headset. You slowly walk around it, taking your headset off during the process and letting it rest around your neck. Henry hadn’t replied for a while, so you’re guessing there’s no point in wearing it if it won’t serve any purpose. 

When you look down at the ground again that isn’t totally destroyed by said explosion, you see metal and glass broken on the ground. You crouch down to get a closer look.

As you look at it more, you start to piece together the shattered green glass and dented gray metal, staring at the red button with wires hanging out the back of it. This has got to be Henry’s teleporter! Really, you’re not sure how it works at all, with the whole switching universes and places thing, but you aren’t here to question mechanics, you’re here in a situation that’s dangerous because you ran in to save your dumb “crush” without even knowing his current state.  
You’re not the brightest, are you?

Despite that, you begin to rise up. Henry isn’t around here, but his teleporter is. Your brain lights up at the fact this could mean that he got away from the explosion, or at least didn’t, y’know **die** from it.  
It instantly darkens again when you realize he still could be harmed, and your legs pick up the pace again.

“Henry?!” You yell at first, vocal cords aching a tad already and your tone hinting confusion. You think you hear a groan, but you can’t tell if it’s real or your mind playing tricks on you. It sounds real enough but also disconnected from reality, disconnected from your mind, so you yell again.

 _“Henry!”_ Yelling a little louder, the hint of confusion is gone. The tone consists of frustration and fear and whatever is boiling in your little pot of emotions.  
You think you hear a small hum of confusion, and when you shut down your thoughts and hear it again, you start running even faster. Hell, you don’t know if that’s even possible with the sweat running over you and the tingling ache in your legs, but it sure as hell feels like it. You’re running like your life depends on it toward that sound. You need to know Henry is okay, or that he’s at the very least alive. 

You feel a hand grab your shoulder, and you freeze up, not wanting to turn. God dammit, you _were_ stupid, weren’t you!? Crashing a helicopter into an organization's building and screaming your partners name through blaring alarms was gonna bring some attention.  
Whoever grabbed you seems impatient with how much time you just spent frozen up and spins you toward them. You were fast and strong enough, but lean and not too heavy at all. You prepared mentally for a gun pointed right at your face, listing off people you wanted to apologize to-

“Charles? Why are you in here?” 

Holy shit that’s Henry. 

Your closed eyes fly open and you let out a breath you didn’t even know you were holding, staring at the lad in front of you. You both were about the same height, so you always ended up staring into each other’s eyes unless you just awkwardly looked away. Plus, your masculinity isn’t that fragile! You can look at your best bro in the eyes and oh god you love him. Why are you like this?  
Egh, your affection is besides the point! You have a mission to complete!  
“Oh, uh…” You take a moment to try and think of a way to say the reason without it sounding stupid as fuck, and without you lying.

“...- I heard the explosion over the microphone! You just kinda disappeared and I’m pretty sure Captain would be pretty angry if you, y’know, died.” Sure, maybe you uh… altered those facts a little, but they aren’t lying! 

Henry seems to think it’s a good enough excuse and nods.  
“Roughed me up a lil’, but it’ll be fine. Besides, we’ve got a mission to do.” You would have been shocked about him talking so much if you weren’t mentally thanking God that he didn’t question you any further, because you’re _not_ a good liar. Usually, Henry doesn’t talk all that much unless he has something he really wants to say. He reserves himself to near silence and small quips.

Besides the point, you and your partner have a mission to complete. You nod in response to Henry’s statement and tap your chin for a moment. Hmm, well, you’d _usually_ have an idea what’s next, but the plans got a little cluttered with the whole explosion thing. 

“Yeah, yeah, sounds fair enough. How far along were you before the whole explosion?” You ask, curiosity leaking into your tone. You don’t think he’ll be shocked, because you’re curious about nearly everything, even though you’ve gotta be knowledgeable enough to be in the government. Besides, you’ve got a good reason! Who knows what plans just got ripped down by that explosion?

“Just on the way to the leaders room, cabin, thing-” He takes a moment to clear his throat and you take that moment to try and rip your affection away from your logic and focus on what he’s actually saying instead of how his voice sounds. You never thought being in love with your partner would be so distracting, you didn’t sign up for this!  
“- was trying to get up there to fight him.” You’re sure most people would wait for him to explain a little further, but you can tell he doesn’t have any more words to say about it, and he doesn’t need to say much more.

“Oohhh, alright! So just gotta get up there, right?” You instinctively lay a hand on your headset only to feel a large dent in them, and you’re assured that they aren’t gonna work. You pray mentally that the Captain doesn’t mind giving you another pair, though you were rather fond of these. 

You don’t have time to grieve though, because Henry points at one of the many alarms on the ceiling going off, screeching a warning and flashing its blaring light. Hell, how did you forget about that? 

You nod to show that you understand him and he starts running, and you’ve got no choice but to follow. Really, you’re not sure how any members haven’t caught onto you two yet, but you aren’t complaining. Though, you’re well aware that isn’t gonna last once you get to the main room.  
You don’t think you’ve ever noticed how hard it gets to breath after running for so long before, but subconsciously you know part of that is just being so close to your partner you’re, well, totally in love with after thinking he had died. You try and push that thought away and convince yourself that it’s just the energy you’re exerting right now from running. Yep, that’s all!

You nearly jump out of your skin as you hear Henry gasp as a bullet flashes by the two of you. Looks like the peace was lasting shorter than you thought, because you can hear another gun being reloaded. You see a door to your side and you don’t care where it leads, it’s safer than being in the hallway of guns and angry workers. You don’t take time to think as you bash yourself and Henry into the door, Henry’s shoulder taking the direct blow that sends the door flying open. As he stumbles from the force just suddenly exerted against him, you throw yourself back against the door to close it back, panicky as you lock the door.

A light groan emits from your partner as he rubs his shoulder, and you wince out of sympathy _and_ your own pain. 

“So- '' You're stopped mid-word by a grumble that you didn't even know escaped your throat as you grasp your affected shoulder a tad too hard. “- sorry about that, didn’t wanna get shot down.” You managed to rasp that out as you look back toward Henry, who only nods in response.

Now that you take a closer look to the room around you, it looks rather important. Maybe getting pushed in here could help more than you expected. Eventually, your eyes get caught on the breaker box. That was pretty important! You think to yourself for a moment, but you’re snapped out as you hear a loud banging noise outside the metal door, filled with rage and absolutely no mercy. You force your own thoughts to go faster. 

You speed-walk to the breaker box, opening it up and having to swiftly turn off all the switches for the power. It takes a little, with all the power being used here, and you nearly yell out of surprise when you hear **another** bang on the door. Once you see the rooms in your own room flicker off, your brain doesn’t take a second to ponder or worry. 

Vent. You saw a vent near where Henry was sitting earlier, it should lead somewhere near the leader’s room, and it would get you out of here.  
“Hey, Henry, do you think you could, uh- kick in that vent next to you?”

You wait for a sound of affirmation or a nod that you can barely see, but you get nothing. Though, you guess the sound of the vent covering being kicked followed by metal clinking against the floor is enough affirmation for you. 

Once your eyes adjust to the dark and you see Henry’s form crawl into the small vent, you follow directly after, not wanting to be near the banging door and dark room longer than you had to be. 

The vent is cold and metal and small, but it’s far better than playing quick time with your own thoughts. God, what if you had let Henry die in that explosion? What if he ended up dead and you had to explain it to the Captain? What if you had to convince yourself that he was actually gone?  
You try to focus on the task at hand, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety wrapping cotton around your mind and blurring your perception. You’ve got to thank god that this is a rather simple task to complete. Just gotta crawl through the vents until you’re on the other side. 

… it’s awkward when it’s quiet, in such a close and dark space. Usually you’d be rambling, but you’ve run out of things to talk about, and Henry isn’t one for talking if he doesn’t have to, so it’s uncomfortably quiet as you two crawl through the vents. Sure, you can deal with a little silence, but that doesn’t mean you _want_ to. It’s like sleeping on the floor, you know you can do it, but you’d rather not. 

You’re not sure if this path was shorter than you thought or if you were just caught in your mind longer than you thought, but you hear Henry struggle for a moment before kicking the other side of the vent down, and you’re almost disappointed at the lack of light until you remember it’s technically _your_ fault it’s dark. You remember now turning off the power to shut down the alarms and hopefully send the members into confusion and a little panic to buy you some time.

You squint as Henry drops down onto the ground, and you crawl a little farther, looking down to make sure Henry wasn’t in the “splash zone” before also dropping yourself down. It wasn’t painful or loud, because the vent was only about 6 feet up. An odd placing for a vent, sure, but you’re not about to complain. Easier for you! It’s hard to get an idea of your surroundings, though, because it’s nearly all drenched in black. You resort to feeling around you to get a basic idea of where you might be.  
You’re not sure what you feel, but you nearly let your heart jump out of your chest at what you’re seeing.

It sounds a lot like a garage door opening up, and it’s kinda like that, the large area of metal slowly raising and allowing slivers of light to slip into the large room around them. However, that’s gotta mean that…

 **”There’s intruders here!”**  
You panic as the yell echoes throughout the room and Henry shuffles through his items to try and find something, anything to use as a distraction. Anything at all.

It’s too late, you realize, as you see the glare of the light hit against the metal of a gun pointed directly at you two. Now’s no time for distractions, you’ve got no choice but to fight fire with fire. You feel sick to your stomach as you realize it’s _just_ you and Henry, because your headset is broken and Henry’s earpiece had probably been left behind. No backup squad to call in now. 

Henry tries to drag something out of his bag to attack, but he’s got no time to react quick enough to get it out before the enemies get the first “hit”.

Really, you’ve gotta be kinda stupid to not assume that they’d not have a bomb or something after already trying to kill Henry once with an explosion, but hey, you never were too intelligent. 

You can hear explosions approaching from the hallway you were trying to take to get here, but they couldn’t be full strength bombs. If they were, you’re sure you’d be dead by the first explosion. They had to be some sort of weaker dynamite, designed more for dramatic scenes than damage, but with so many lined together, they could surely come up with a worthwhile explosion. Not bomb worth, no, but still damned dangerous.  
You think the leader has a death wish to stand so close to the door which chaos is occurring outside. Plus, they’ve got to be an idiot if they didn’t set any near the door or in here, there’d be no point in setting them off then.

Your point is proven further as the door connected to the hallway blows open, a small crater in the floor forming. It’s loud, blaring loud, but you’re far enough where it doesn’t explode your ears like the rest of this place. It puts in perspective how large this room is compared to you, but you think you see smaller explosives lined up until about 30 feet from you. Of course, you try and pack yourself and Henry as far away from them as possible, but you can only get so far as they start exploding behind you. Sure, they won’t blow you up outright, but they could surely handicap you if you were close enough or maybe let you bleed out if any wounds opened.

Henry’s behind you and you feel the impact grow larger, the ground shaking beneath you as you keep trying to move away, drag him forward. 

You don’t have time to throw him in front of you before the last 3 explode. 

You use one hand to cover an ear and another to cling to your partners arm or hand or whatever the fuck you were holding before as the final explosion ringed out. It wasn’t stronger than any of the others, but that didn’t stop it from being loud and leaving a ring in your ears. It’s bright but not enough to blind you, it’s too much and yet too little for you to be able to complain about.

Besides, you're not the one dangling over a hole that breaks through at least 3 floors, now are you?

You think the other floors must have been torn apart at another time, but you’re holding Henry above a fall that could probably disable him if he were to hit it wrong, and you can tell by the pressure and drag that fights against your body. You want to analyze Henry’s expression, look at his injuries, but not now. You were never a heavy lifter, but you’ll rip apart your muscles dragging him up if it means he doesn’t fall.

Not having time to apologize or chit-chat, all your energy suddenly shifts from keeping yourself up to dragging Henry up onto the ground that you’re standing on, although shaky. Even if it shook, it was still up. This is not how you expected things to go, but hey, surprises are common in this job.

Eventually you manage to get his upper body over the edge and pull him a little farther, nearly faltering for a moment as you hear the other yelp. When you look down a little further to try and figure out what the problem was, you see the edge of the hole ripping through part of his pants and cutting through his leg. Shit, that was _not_ the intention. Though you try and get him farther from the sharp area of the hole, you only have so much strength and are trying to get him up before your arms collapse. You have to keep pulling him up as it scrapes his skin.

WIth one final tug, you manage to pull him fully over the edge and almost fall backward whenever you let go of his arm at last. He’s heavier than you expected! 

Wait, he’s hurt. Pretty badly at that. 

When you crouch down to try and get a look at the injury, you’re met first with the cut in his knee that you technically caused and a large burn that rages over the back of his legs, but his pants obviously limit your ability to see how far up it goes. Hell, it might even go up his back. You should have thought about the heat of explosions more, y’know.  
He’s bleeding from his knee and you try to put him in a position where the most minimal amount of injuries are dragging against the ground as you pull him onto a more stable area. 

“Egh, man… didn’t expect him to pull that out, but I’m pretty sure we got em’.” You look up and confirm that “you” (techincally, it was the explosions) managed to get the leader. Really, you expected him to have some cool escape! Laying down on the ground, his chest heaves, proving that he’s **not** dead.

You reach over Henry’s shoulder and try to drag something out of his bag. Anything that you can use to contact the Captain, because you sadly can’t just leave on your own accord without your helicopter. You manage to come across a walkie talkie and pull it back toward you, pressing the call button with your thumb. 

“Charles Calvin, calling the Captain.” You say after a second or two as you wait for the radio transmitter to catch up to the fact it has to function now.

 _”Go ahead.”_ You hear the Captain's voice transfer over, and a little relief rises into your chest.

“Hey, uh… Henry got hurt, real bad. We need someone to come get us.” You clear your throat as you raise your gaze just to make sure your enemy is still in the same place.  
“We got em’ though, got em’ real good.”

 _”Roger that, what’s your 20?”_

You gotta go through your military knowledge for a small second to remember what he’s talking about. Oh, location. Yeah, you guess that’s sorta important.

“We’re just in the main room, you should be able to get through the large door.”

 _”Understood, over.”_ And just like that, his voice cuts out and you place the device on the floor next to you.  
You look down at your partner under you, clearly trying to restrain his pain, but he’s weaker than usual and that sends another shock of concern through you. Not a great sign.  
“Hey, hey, stay awake for me, alright?” You think he weakly nods, because you see his head move a tad. You’ll take it as affirmation if only to help calm your beating heart.  
“Stay with me, stay awake. You gotta stay awake for me, I know it hurts.” You ramble a tad at the end, but you can’t find it in you to mentally bash yourself for it right now. You find it a little ironic that you came in here for the sole fact that you were fearful of Henry dying, but here you were, with a bleeding and burnt partner laying on the ground. Not exactly the most pleasant thing you’ve experienced. 

When you don’t get a response, you try and look at his face to see if anything happened, only to be greeted to him fading in and out of sleep, and it scares the shit out of you. What if he doesn’t wake up? What if they don’t get here in time? You know it’s selfish not to let him rest, you’re sure he’s gotta be a little tired with the pain plaguing him and the mission at hand, but you don’t think your heart can take it. You can’t mentally even take that chance, and as you watch him fade into sleep again, your hands instantly reach out to try and shake him awake.

So much fear makes you feel like the world is caving in around you.

“H- hey, hey-” You start again, shaking him lightly to give physical stimuli to try and focus on besides the pain and fatigue.  
“Henry. Henry, stay with me here, alright? Think about Ellie, she’s nice, isn’t she? You’ve got a lot in common.” You don’t know why it irks you deep inside to say that, but it breaks your heart a little, but if your odd rambling and panicked statements are enough to keep Henry grounded, there’s no way in hell you’re stopping. 

“Ellie, Ellie… Ellie’s not here, but I am. I’m right here, okay? Got that? Stay awake for me.” Your voice is awfully firm and you’re shocked it hasn’t managed to falter yet.  
He seems to nod below you, but it’s done lazily and he closes his eyes, his breathing growing slower. You start shaking more violently as panic grips you and rips you apart from the inside.

“No, no- hey, stay here. Stay awake, okay, got it?” You keep repeating those words like a mantra until his eyes open again, and then you’re over the deep end. You’re desperate to keep his eyes open for you to see.

“Bud, stay awake. You gotta stay awake, please. Remember back home? Remember the base? Captain can be demanding sometimes, but he’s nice enough, I swear-” You’re rambling. You know you’re rambling and you don’t care, as long as you can force enough words out of yourself to keep Henry’s attention, you could care less.

“Remember how you got pardoned a few years ago? You’re doing real good as a Special Covert Op, y’know that? And you’re gonna keep doing that, just gotta stay up for me.” His eyes stay open, but they’re hazy and you can feel by the way his shoulders move that he’s getting weak again, losing attention. You see him growing exhausted as his eyes gradually closed again. You can’t do this. There’s so much commotion in your brain and the floodgates are open, there’s no restraining what you say and why you say it.

“No, no, _no_. You’ve still got a lot to do, okay? There’s still stuff you gotta do, you can’t leave yet. I- I _love_ you, we gotta get you back home. I’m gonna get you back, okay bud?” Hold on, backtrack there. You didn’t say what you just said, did you? Did you just confess your love to your ops partner out of panic? Shit, you totally did!

Well, by the way his eyes flash open again, it looks like it at least did the job you were trying to do.

You can pick up the sound of a helicopter flying outside the building and slowly growing closer, slowly raising your attention from the other’s shocked expression to watch as the helicopter grows closer. That’s good! Good, because you have an escape method now! You just gotta-

Your attention snaps back toward your totally lame adult crush as you hear him try and mumble something before he’s asleep. Fuck, fuck, no- he can’t be, he’s not supposed to be- 

You shake him to try and wake him up, remind him of reality, but he doesn’t awaken. As you watch the helicopter come close enough for you to actually get on, you slide the walkie talkie next to you in your jacket pocket as you grab up Henry and carry him the best you can, grabbing onto one of the bars for support as you pull yourself up and into the helicopter. You’re not sure what they’re gonna do to the leader, but you hope it’s not all for nothing.

Panic is screaming in your mind as Henry lays in your arms.

* * *

You’ve been sitting around in the hospital for a while.

It’s been a week since the mission. The mission where you swore Henry nearly died. The mission where your heart was torn apart multiple times. The mission where you put fatality before emotion.

The mission where you, well, accidentally confessed to him. You’re not sure what to do about that, really. Part of you is glad you forced it out, glad you got it out of your system before you could bully yourself out of it, but part is a little scared to see his reaction when he wakes up. His injuries certainly weren’t the worst, and you’re sure they could be worse, but that doesn’t drown your guilt.

That’s all you’ve been feeling lately, just hollow and guilty. It’s not a usual feeling, and you don’t like it. Most days, you’re curled up in your room with noise cancelling headphones on as you tap your fingers against your thighs. It’s supposed to give you something to focus on, but it doesn’t work, the thoughts are stronger than you. You stay alone until someone comes in to tell you that you can go to the hospital to sit. 

You sit there like you’re doing now and you wait. Most of the times you don’t even get to visit Henry besides small glimpses, but everyday you sit there nonetheless. Maybe eventually you’ll be let in when he wakes up. He’ll wake up, right? You’re sure of it!

You tell yourself that, but really, you’re not that sure at all. 

You just really gotta hope that he wakes up, because you don’t think your heart can take another hit right now. It’s already laying shattered and terrified in your chest, you don’t think it has any more room to be damaged. You just can’t do it right now. You’re out of the usual hopeful Charles mood, but who can blame you? 

You’re left alone to stare at the tiled floor of the hospital as you wait for a doctor to give you a rundown. To tell you that you cannot see Henry today, and you feel as if you’ll never get to see him. The guilt and fear drags through your system. 

You fail to realize a nurse stepping in until she clears her throat and your head snaps up. You can’t read the emotion in her face, and it irks you to your core. Though, people have told you that you can’t really read, well, _anyone’s_ emotions unless you have an ungodly tight bond, and you’ve never quite met this nurse before. Though, her words make you feel like you’re being lifted off the ground.

_”Your co-worker is awake, you can go visit him now.”_

You don’t have the time or mental capability to form a literate response, so you smile and nod as you speed-walk to Henry’s room. You’re restraining your want to run, your want to run and grab Henry and just hug the death out of him, but he’s injured and you’re in a hospital. You have to calm down your eager wants in turn for basic respect. 

Once you walk into the room, you see Henry. He’s awake, he’s alive, he’s _okay_ and you want to burst out into tears. You’re so in love with him it tears you apart to see him in this state but heals you spiritually to know he’s okay. He’s still here with you. You have to push down the urge to yell and sob out of joy and instead “calmly” (you’re not calm at all, everything is a lie) walk toward him and hover above him.

“Hey, bud, you awake?”

“Yeah, yeah. I am.” He mumbles out, and you hate how you’re so lovesick that you nearly collapse into a crying, loving puddle right then and there just over hearing his voice. It’s only been a week but your heart could barely handle not being able to talk to him, not being able to see him and not listen to his small quips. 

“We got em’.” You remark as you drag one of the chairs right next to his bed and sit down in it as you watch the other nod. You’re so lovesick, feelings have got to be fatal because you think your heart is going to explode. 

He nods, staring up at the ceiling. You’re not good at reading faces, but you can tell when Henry wants to say something. When he actually wants to speak up, or when he has to. You can tell by the light twitch of his lips and how he tries to press them into a thin line, the questioning look in his eyes matched with hesitation. You can tell by the light convulsions in his muscles that he’s holding something back, but with the state he’s in, you’re not sure if you want to push for an answer. You simply nod as you wait for him to speak or recede back into his shell.

“... hey, Charles?”

“Yeah?” You snap out of your loved thoughts to look him in the eyes as he glances toward you. 

“... did you mean what you said back at the base?” Your heart nearly jumps out of your chest. This is it, this is the question. The one that either helps heal your swollen and torn heart or beats you into the ground based on the answer. But, you can’t let fear take over. You have to fight against the urge to lie, gulping as you speak.

“Well, I mean… yeah. What about it?” You brace for the worst mentally, fingers going to tap on your arm as you wait for a response. It’s scary, but nothing compares to the fear that shocked you as you had to shake Henry awake, as you had to beg and ramble to keep his attention. You don’t think much will ever compare to that.

“I love you too.” It’s blurted out, forced out of his throat but filled with more emotion than you’re used to. You listen too closely to his tone to realize what he just said. You play it at least 10 times in your brain, once to realize what he said, the other 9 to indulge in the feeling of being loved. The other 9 to calm your nerves and make you dissolve further into a lovestruck mess. For christ’s sake, you’re 28 years old and dissolving into love like a teenage fangirl.

You stand up from your chair to hover above him again, staring down at him. You don’t know what your facial expression is right now, but it’s ought to be something embarrassing with the thoughts being thrown around your brain and the blood that you can feel as it rises to your face. 

You lean down where your lips are only centimeters apart, so far but so close. Your heart is beating out of your chest.  
“Uh, can I- ?” 

You nearly nervously chuckle before Henry rises up to close the gap between you two and you melt against his lips. It’s the greatest thing you’ve ever felt.

Your name is Charles Calvin, and at the end of the day, you’re tooth-rottingly in love with Henry Stickmin, and you think he is too as your lips are pressed together.


End file.
